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Monthly Archives: July 2011

Right, so we’ve covered chubby Jess and skinny Alf…..yeah, I said it. Now let’s have a look at the rest of them:

Dad’s alright for a skin, I get loads of fuss off him, and I can live with that. He spends alot of time on the computer, that’s why I have to nip in quick to write this diary. I don’t know what he does but he seems happy doing it, and it keeps him out of my fur while I dig his garden for him.

I think Mom might be a nutrit…a nutritit…..someone who looks after peoples’ weight, because every time Dad gives me a treat he says “There you go Bones, don’t tell your mother.”

Mom’s the dog walker, she takes us down to the fields at the bottom of the road and we get let off the lead. Alf bombs off like his tail’s on fire; I’m next, if I had longer legs I might have a chance of keeping up; finally, bringing up the rear is Jessie, she only runs in short bursts with a silly grin on her face and her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth. Sometimes I can’t run for laughing at her funny face. I can’t let her catch up though; being a border collie, she thinks she’s up on the hills herding sheep, and guess who the sheep is….yeah me! She comes galloping up like a crazed shire horse and if I don’t get out of the way she grabs my back leg! The big lump!

In the house where I live there’s an upstairs bit where we’re not allowed to go. There’s a gate at the bottom of the stairs to keep us out. Sometimes the skins leave it open but the collies don’t go up there, I decided to take a look and now I know why they don’t go…Raffles.

I should have listened, the collies said “don’t go up there short stuff, Raffles is up there”, I thought “what’s a raffle?” I knew there was a cat up there because I’d seen a little black and white face up peering down at me. Dad called her Millie and she trotted down the stairs to have a look at me on the day I first arrived. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t got anything against cats but I don’t want to be friends with one and she definitely didn’t want to be friends with me, every time I’ve shouted up the stairs to her she sticks her skinny butt in the air and flicks her tail; cheek, who’s she think she is? Alfie says cats are only useful for one thing and that’s chasing! Then he lowered his voice and looked up, “except Raffles….” What the hell is a raffle?

Anyway the day I decided to investigate upstairs I set off, I didn’t realise how steep stairs were, especially for a pup like me. There was a strange rythmic pounding that I could feel under my pads. I stopped: what was that? I took another couple of steps and the vibrations got stronger, then I could hear them: boom, boom, boom. I stopped again and listened, I looked over my shoulder and just caught site of the collies tails and they disappeared in different directions, what’s up with them? The pounding noise stopped but the warm breath stinking of fish from above told me that something might be wrong. I turned and looked up to be faced with a creature from hell. A huge ginger nightmare was staring down at me with green eyes blazing, a look of contempt seething on his demonlike features. I realised then what a raffle was.

Ok, he’s a big lad but out of shape, I do this for a living….if he wants to fight then lets have it. Yeah buster, you’ve never met a border terrier before have you? I heard Alfie call up from his hiding place “Bones, you’re not Scrappy Doo… slowly back away from the cat.” I looked back at Raffles to see a huge white paw about the size of my head hovering above me. My life flashed before my eyes – oh, that didn’t take long. Then an even bigger shadow loomed over both of us, Dad!

“That’s enough Raff, leave him alone.” Raffles obediently turned and the boom boom started again as he went back upstairs, probably to finish the elk he was feeding on or something. “Yes mate, you’d better run, that’s it keep walking, you don’t know how close you came, any time you want to try…putemup, putemup!!!” He reached the top of the stairs, turned and smiled. I felt a little chill pass down my spine and I think a little pee might have leaked out.

Dad took me in the living room and told me to sit down. He gave me a telling off about keeping away from Raffles and how I should be careful on the stairs in case I fall. He’s right of course but as he wagged his finger in front of my face, I couldn’t resist jumping up and biting it….

Let me tell you about where I live and my new family. I mentioned before about the two brutes that greeted me on my first day here, I’d better introduce them. They are two collie crosses, Jessie and Alfie.

Alfie is about 3 years old and has got to be the fastest dog in the whole world! Don’t get me wrong, I might be small but I’m quick, very quick in fact, but Alf….he is something else. I can only just keep up with him across the fields if I’m travelling full pelt. Jess reckons he’s crossed with a whippet but Alf doesn’t know, he can’t remember his parents, he was brought home by Mom from a rescue centre in Derby. I think he had it rough when he was a pup, but he doesn’t like to talk about it.

Jess is older and bigger, Alf told me she’s crossed with a bulldozer, but he didn’t say it in front of Jess; I don’t think she’d find it funny. She can be a bit grumpy when she wants to be….typical bitch. She’s ok though I suppose, you just try not to get on the wrong side of her.

I love Alf though, he’s like a big brother, I follow him everywhere. I know sometimes I get on his nerves, probably because I spend so much time attached to his face, chewing and pulling his ears, his jowls whatever I can sink my teeth into. He lets me know when he’s had enough because he growls and goes and sits on the big wide windowsill in front of the bay window, he knows I can’t get up there – yet!

I’ll carry this on when I’ve got more time, but I’ve got to go for a run around the garden; and when you gotta go, you gotta GO!

If you need to ask me anything about rearing a puppy, dog training, getting the right equipment, food, going on holiday with your dog etc. Or if you’re another dog and you’re looking for a sympathetic ear then get in touch and I’ll do my best to help. Afterall, who better than a dog to answer your doggie questions? If I don’t know I’ll ask Jess and Alf, they know everything!

Hi! This is my first proper entry and hopefully the first of many. I first intended to start this blog when my Dad first brought me home, but you know how it is – new home, new family, new things to sniff and chew. I did write a few things which I’m going to include here so you can get an idea of what it was like:

Dear Diary, I have decided to keep a diary of events so
that when I grow up I can look back at when I was puppy and see how much I have
changed, seems like a good idea, I hope I can keep it up, I have to make sure I
put aside a little time every day, it’s just that there’s so much to
investigate….

19/04/11

Something’s happening but I’m not sure what; a couple of
days ago a couple of skins came to our house (me and my brothers call people
“skins” because they only have small tufts of fur on their heads, they look
funny), it was a man and a woman. They were kind-looking skins who smiled a lot
and we enjoyed getting a bit of extra fuss. We could smell strange dogs on
them, I said to my two brothers that it would be good to meet these strange
dogs and play with them in the yard like we do with the older dogs here. They
went away again and we soon forgot about them because we were enjoying a
fantastic scrap between the three of us, every dog for himself.

Today the male skin is back and he’s fussing me again, I
don’t mind that, but my instincts tell me something is about to happen, I’ll
write more later when I find out what.

Oh wow! I mean double wow!!! The skin has kidnapped me!
HELP!!!

I told you things were happening and I was right. It’s a
little bit confusing at the moment but I’ll try to put the pieces together,
make some sense out of all this. First of all the skin told me he was going to
be my new dad; hmm, ok, I’ll go along with that for the time being. He smells
ok (for a skin) and he smiles a lot, which one of the older dogs, Rosa, told me
was a good sign. I was getting a bit scared; he put me in a box with slots in
the side that I could see out of and a wire mesh on the front. It smelled funny
in there, a smell I couldn’t identify, but there was a soft blanket in there
with a familiar smell, it smelled like my mother and I was ok, it was
comforting. I felt a bit calmer when I smelt her, but still this was turning
out to be quite a day.

My new dad put me in his car then climbed in the seat
next to me. He looked down and smiled, putting his finger through the mesh and
telling me in a low voice that I shouldn’t worry and he was taking me home; I
thought I was at home….very confusing, I licked his finger and gave it a little
nip for good measure. I wasn’t too worried though, this was my first time in a
car and I was a excited. My brothers and I had seen cars coming and going in
the drive outside the yard and we had wondered what it would be like to ride in
one like the skins. We heard skins calling them cars so we knew what they were
but how come they had no fur at all?

After a short time he got out of the car and came and
lifted the box out with me in it. I said goodbye to the car but it didn’t
reply, it just sat there. Being a car must be really boring. We went through a
door and he laid the box down. We were inside a different house and the smells
and sounds were strange. I smelt those strange dogs again and something else –
something that I first sensed when I got in the box; it would require further
investigation. The mesh door at the front of the box opened and I took a step
out into my new home.

Without my brothers here I had nobody to talk to about
what was going on, that made everything seem a little bigger than I thought I
could deal with on my own. This place was totally alien to anything I had
experienced before, I was unsure what to look at next, what to sniff next. I stood
for a while, looking around, I looked up at my new dad who towered above me, “I’m
gonna be OK, aren’t I?” He knelt down and fussed me behind the ears. He told me
I was about to meet my new family. The noise behind the door got louder,
scratching and whining; then, in what seemed a whirlwind of black and white
fur, he released the beasts!

I was shocked these ugly looking brutes who smelled funny
came charging out of the kitchen at me. I barely heard my new dad saying, “Bones,
meet Jessie and Alfie” before being jumped on. “Gently now guys!” Dad warned
but they were over-excited, I thought I was going to get squashed. Their noses
were everywhere, my butt, my peepee, NO TONGUES PLEASE!